Are we too comfortable in America? In our homes? In our personal lifes? Is it wrong to want to be at ease? I don't know, this is only putting forth the question of discomfort in creating change. I don't really presume to know enough to have answers. But I am not adverse to pretending I do.

“Why can’t we just all get along?” How many times have we heard it? Certainly often here on Authorsden and of course, it has been a cry of youth rallying for world peace for generations. But is it the answer?

Consider: To paraphrase Gibran, a pearl is built by pain around a grain of sand, without the discomfort caused by that small irritant, we would miss the enjoyment of a lovely strand of pearls. Does the clam care? Does he offer up this delight out of the goodness of his heart? Hardly. He is trying to ease an uncomfortable situation, by applying a balm, which in turn creates the pearl. So from discomfort comes beauty.

Another example: The broken shoulder was once held in place by a body cast, preventing any movement of the two broken parts. Physician’s now know that the two pieces of bone need to rub and chafe in order for the body to know that it needs to proceed with the healing process. From discomfort comes healing.

Would the mousetrap have ever been invented if cats took care of the mouse control situation? Would women ever have been given the vote if men hadn’t got sick of hearing them complain about the way they handled things? Well, maybe that isn’t a good example but change will only be affected when there is enough dissatisfaction with the status quo; enough discomfort, enough discord, enough downright pain is what it takes to make us decide to do something different. Complacency is the enemy of change, as we grow fat and successful, our desire to get out and create and rebuild grows weaker. Leave it alone, let it stand, don’t worry about it…. whether it is the government, the welfare system, the medical system, or even our own family and careers, our natural instinct is to leave well enough alone. It is only when taxes kill us, when the actions of our leaders hit us at home, it is only when we or someone we love needs care they can’t get because of inadequate medical controls, it is only when our children begin dying of drug overdoses that we realize the need for change and then usually too late. From discomfort comes change.

We need to be dissatisfied, we need to be hungry, we need to be uncomfortable because until we are, we are going to lie around our pools, or on an overstuffed sofa watching a big screen TV, we are going to go on looking the other way while the world around us goes to Hell. But we will get along fine, because our channels of communication have broken down to the point that we really don’t have to deal with one another on a one to one basis anymore. So we can lock ourselves away from the things we don’t like, use caller i.d. to avoid the unwelcome news, cable and satellite TV to avoid reading the newspapers and if we just close our eyes long enough, maybe things will just straighten out on their own.

I am very guilty of this in my own personal life…I gave up drugs and alcohol, not because I suddenly saw the error of my ways in the middle of a beautiful high. Of course not, I quit because it started getting ugly and uncomfortable, I started to see the very real likelihood of death or jail in my immediate future. Discomfort, therefore, change. As simple or as complicated as that, it is the truth. We do not change something that makes us happy and comfortable. Society, marriage, education, and job whatever it may be, changes will only come when it becomes more uncomfortable to stay than to go or change. It is normal and it is human but it is also harmful to us as a people collectively and individually.

I’m not saying we need to move into a wooden shack and do without amenities to be uncomfortable. We only have to really look around us at the way others are living, at the way society is deteriorating, at the way the family life is eroding and we will become uncomfortable enough to start changing. But first we have to see, we have to feel for others, we have to care about posterity and what we are leaving them. If we care enough, we will be uncomfortable. We will cease to get along with the people who are standing in the way of positive change. We will stop blindly co-existing and we will chafe and rub and hurt until we change, until we grow, until we heal. Starting first in the home, then in the community, then in the country, we can create a better world. And then perhaps we will have created that pearl of an environment that our children and their children can live in the way we would want them to. And perhaps they will take a look at the government and direct their energies toward changing it. That’s one I would hate to tackle.